


Snape's Diary (Kinda not really)

by LadyHeliotrope



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-18 21:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22500430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHeliotrope/pseuds/LadyHeliotrope
Summary: A light title for a dark poem collection.
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

Hogwarts is done to me.  
Granted it was the only place  
I have ever known the happiness  
Of basking in the sun  
With grace and joy in my heart,  
But it is too the place  
Of loneliness and grief  
And joyless drudge  
That have poisoned me slowly  
And made my heart limp and weak.

Hogwarts is done to me.  
A thousand times  
Have I seen this day before,  
Rushing in front of my eyes  
As I peer over the balcony  
Into the gloom of a sunny day  
That accompanied the backdrop  
Of my life, my love, my unhappiness.

Hogwarts is done to me.  
I never will again know the feeling  
Of silky linen sheets washed by houselves  
Or the flavor of fresh-made pumpkin juice in the morning  
That was the sole sustenance  
For the stomach made queasy by adrenaline  
Churned by watching death all night.

Hogwarts is done to me,  
My home, only of habit  
And a lack of faith  
That anywhere else would  
Happily call itself my home.  
It was a bad habit,  
One that sustained my darker ones.  
I never grew out of my adolescence there.

Hogwarts is done to me,  
And now all I have left  
Is a broken body,  
A broken soul,  
And the fresh twin spirits of  
Adventure and change  
To guide me to a new home.


	2. I will sit and wait for the bell

Opus VI

_How can I answer the challenge of so many eyes! They do not delight in the grain of rigor. No creeping tenderness comforts my heart, chill with loneliness. I will sit and wait for the bell._

* * *

As I deny the pain of looks askance

From my fellow colleagues at breakfast

("He is so sullen..."

"He bore a dark mark!"

"He's really _so_ homely,"

"He's far too young to teach,")

I lay a finger on the bridge of my nose

And beg that the day pass with speed.

An unexpected, reluctant schoolmaster,

I am Ichabod Crane:

My heart is beleaguered,

My mind is far from prepared,

My will is burdened by obligation,

My soul is stretched by grief.

I survive strictly on Dumbledore's charity

And must grovel in humility.

I am bent like a supple reed,

With so little within my control;

Overwhelmed by children's laughter too loud,

Overwhelmed by the muffling silence of my chambers,

Overwhelmed by the careless loss of my better half,

Overwhelmed by the anger that comes despite self-reproach.

Can I ever feel organic joy again

When my every breath is remotely regulated?

In the brown gloom of candlelight

I wash upon the beach of the classroom,

Feeling as hapless as a cork on the sea,

Feeling the weight of my sins infiltrate my pores

Feeling saturated with predestination

Feeling like Gulliver crossed with a thousand threads.

It is early and I can be alone for a minute to brood

Before forty eyes challenge the man who enchained himself.

They enter and speak of snow and dancing sunbeams

And I greet them with sternness only I deserve:

I wrap their childish joy in a bundle of graded parchments,

I slap them into silence with fierce commands of chalk,

I trap their unspoken thoughts with indifference,

I sap the life of these adolescent blossoms with glee.

But we mutually avert our eyes; each pale face resembles

The ancient moon that plays an unwelcome role in my bondage.

No, they are a constellation of stars; each has potential.

I tell myself that my austerity will be an asset to them,

If only to prepare them for the harshness of life,

If only to prevent them from frolicking about in danger,

If only to provide a training against which genius can react,

If only because I hope my own adversity can be overcome.

But how can I answer the challenge of so many eyes!

They do not delight in the grain of rigor.

I want to be the teacher I wish I had:

Professionally strict, personally interested, perpetually aware.

So I notice the feuds that erupt in class and without

So I notice the swaggering boys and the sashaying girls

So I notice the phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic, and sanguine

So I notice when one of my charge steps out of his archetypal pattern.

But I fear to interfere, lest I displease my master,

Lest I find my skills in deduction* are unworthily esteemed.

It takes a meditation on dark memories to inspire

The necessary courage of spirit and sense of urgent need

To summon my inborn delight in seeing justice served,

To approach the haughty roosters of the pecking order,

To inflate my ego over boys scarcely younger than I,

To relish the righteous anger and release it like the waters of the Jordan.

I am uneasy on the precipice of authority;

My anger is only a counterbalance to my insignificance.

Why must I remain here, thick crumpled snow upon the roof?

Some teachers are eaves and allow their students to build nests in them,

And to them, like swallows, year after year the children gladly return,

To them the students seek solace in the winters of adolescent life,

To them their youth approach with warm puppydog tenderness,

To them the infants beg for a suckle and find a comfortable breast.

Why must I be the cold force of weighty reality in this uplifted dreamworld?

No creeping tenderness will ever comfort my heart, chill with loneliness.

There are no potions today in this first-year class;

Instead their round heads are bowed, engaged in essay writing.

Not a one of them looks to me with anything but fear,

Not a one of them raises his face to meet my eyes,

Not a one of them smiles or exclaims in the ecstasy of work,

Not a one of them seeks to be led to twine towards the heavens.

It is sweet to not be noticed as I briefly allow my facade to collapse;

For an instant or two, the swarming lives before me are forgotten.

I was given a poem on my first day of class

By Dumbledore, man of many faces and motives.

I found many things in it:

I found an undue chorus of optimism

I found an impressionistic painting of idealism,

I found a grain of reality.

The wisest line I found to be the last:

I will sit and wait for the bell.

* * *

_*N.B. I do dislike to use the word 'deduction' when the proper word for the logical process is indeed abduction, but Snape wouldn't know that, as most people do not know that except the occasional Holmes scholar or student of logic. Therefore, I ameliorate the problem with this footnote._   
_Also: The poem in question that he received from Dumbledore, if you choose to look it up, is in a book of verse by D.H. Lawrence, called "The Schoolmaster."_


	3. My heart's in the highlands

My heart's in the highlands, my heart is not here.

My heart's in the highlands a chasing a deer,

And when it has found her I will go without fear

On whatever road she wishes I veer.

My heart's in the highlands, my heart is not here.

My heart aches with ages of being unclear.

And when I convey my repentance sincere

I pray she will smile and hold me close dear.

My heart's in the highlands, my heart is not here.

My heart's been in agony for many a year

And if she allows me to share just a tear

I'll sacrifice all just to keep her near.

My heart's in the highlands, my heart is not here.

My heart's seeking her in the heavenly spheres.

And if it should return from that great frontier

It's only because I must protect my living peers.

My heart's in the highlands, my heart is not here.

My heart's been relearning how on earth to hear

And when I can sense the expression most mere

I will know I am ready to see her appear.


	4. this is the way the world ends

Rough winds did shake those darling buds of May  
As the anxious princess of night was born from the queen of day.  
Two Titans prepared to duel on the haggard face of Hogwarts that night,  
Their roars preparing the supple fieldgrass to bend for the fight,  
A fight that would threaten the bones of a thousand men and women  
Who desired little more in life than the peace that once had been.

They were not alone in their hopes to end the weary war:  
One mighty hero embodied this purpose, but lay near-vanquished on the floor.  
Desperate to fight time, a pool of his own blood around him,  
This undivine man patched his wounds alone; he stunk too much with sin.  
Severus Snape knew his insignificance well, and only prayed  
That Dumbledore's gift of phoenix tears would be not squandered aid.

In his heart he knew that there was nothing further he could do  
To turn the fight in their favor, though it was a knowledge he rued.  
All the more did he mourn that Dumbledore's plan  
Was in action; the recipe called for death of more than one man.  
Dumbledore had conferred with the fates concerning the best tests  
Through which to put Snape, a man craving rest,  
In designing the termination of Riddle, which meant that  
Severus' life-purpose to preserve the boy was wrapped.  
But despite the atrocity of Dumbledore's games,  
Snape accepted Harry's death, paramount being his aim  
To atone for his sins to a worshipful-woman fair,  
Crushing the part of himself that had caused him to err.

As the medicine did its duty as a balm to the corporal vessel,  
Snape pondered his future in the event of a mission successful.  
If the world learned his soul was merely unbeautiful-not unhuman-black pith,  
He would merely be a post-Copernican Atlas, only beloved in myth.  
Was this enough gratitude to make all the memories worth enduring?  
A life-review was necessary to begin on his soul's structural repairing.  
There had been so little satisfaction in all of his years of duplicitous lies  
But there would be so much in fierce _Sectumsempras_ and his enemies' surprise.

Thus he sated his imagination until his healing was done.  
Though weak, Severus began to think of how the tired son  
Of a demon could best turn against his father mid-battle.  
Would it be better to retain his mask before the devil,  
Explain the error that Satan had made,  
And to expect a welcome back to serve in the unholy raid?  
This would cost the life of at least one Malfoy;  
Though Severus would not regret Lucius, the boy  
He had promised Narcissa to keep safe for life.  
Death for himself would be certain if he made Draco a sacrifice.  
If this was not enough, his spirit and the boy's were kindred.  
Snape never killed a man lest it was his duty sacred,  
Much less one who bore all the hatred, anger, and pain  
That Severus himself carried, long and in vain.  
So unconflicted by cost, since neither daughter nor ducats had he,

Severus, like Atlas, did not foist off his burden for eternity.  
But might the dark lord, at his abrupt reappearance,  
Find due cause to kill him for the sin of resilience?  
Snape thought he respected Fawkes' tears  
Better than to gamble on the Moirae's shears.

So the safest chance to further the greatest good for the greatest number  
In Snape's view, was the simple disguise of an anonymous glamor.  
He wandered onto the field thus, with this guise  
Drawing and shooting his arrows like Artemis wise  
Empowered at the knowledge that he finally could fight  
Without need to justify which party he thought more right.  
The devil himself, had he been on the field,  
Might have, beneath Snape's vigor, keeled  
For Severus Snape was no selfserving bore  
But a fighter, and survivor, and passionate menace of war.  
It was not for his own colors that he fought, like Achilles fair;  
He thought only of a beautiful doe with green eyes and glossy red hair,  
Until the ceasefire came, and with tragic dignity  
He and the others lowered their arms and took their dead from the sea  
Of battle, where Posidon ruled in blood, to the distant dry shore.

Then all the living heroes, unsatisfied and enraged, returned for  
The sight that grieved them all: Harry Potter, the divine child  
Was borne in defeat by his dearest magical friend, the mild,  
Impassioned, grief-ridden Hagrid, with a bawling so fierce  
That the half-giant had a fortune's worth of tears in his beard.

This horror was not unexpected, however;  
Not long ago Dumbledore had lost Snape's _her_  
And it had only been a matter of time before  
Those Potter-rimmed green eyes were no more.  
The only thought that resonated in the mind and heart of the spy,  
Was a poem-stanza, simple and hollow and terrible and dry:  
 _This is the way the world ends,  
The world ends, the world ends  
This is the way the world ends  
At three o'clock in the morning_.


	5. He could not stop for death, so death kindly stopped him.

Opus II

He could not stop for death, so death kindly stopped him.

A great Olympic game was his life, and he knew from the start that he would not win.

No chariot of Apollo, no winged horse of Hercules had he.

Instead he trampled the moss with the feet of ineffable humanity

And where was the trumpet-call to herald his start

But eons away, sung by a cruel angel in hell's dark.

He bore a torch on his journey, upon which two mountain-gods laid claim

And when the torch-flame did waver as he stumbled, both gods did him blame.

Like Prometheus he skirted the thunderbolts that fell

As the gods roared and assembled their forces to duel.

But Severus Snape's allegiance was independent of these fools,

Who thought of him as both volatile and docile; the perfect self-sacrificing tool.

His torch was lit for one soul only, that of an ancient doe

Whose banner gleamed silver and green, red and gold.

But carry it he did, though his journey through the dark woods,

Ravines, and mountain passes was littered by thoughts of his "ought not"s and "should"s.

His selfish, selfless run was tireless, consistent, and well-paced

Though he never once expected that he might win the race.

Perhaps if he punished the body enough, he hoped

The chance of redemption for the sins with which he was soaked

Would be better, but even this meager prize

Was one he could only see through a set of too-familiar green eyes.

And when all was done, when the Olympics were ending,

When he had fulfilled his purgatory and his immortality was pending

He knew he would be prostrate on the crags, well-chained in punishment

His innards eaten out by a phoenix and a snake, a warning against dissent.

Did he mind? He didn't know; time for him had stopped long ago

Before he had realized that his job was to run behind the flow

And before his thoughts of superiority had been inversed

To be replaced with masochism far more perverse.

Dashing away to sacrifice himself for himself,

It was the journey's last bend that he most felt

Would be the hardest to successfully pass.

What gratitude he experienced at long last

When the Moirae cut his silver-gold life thread

In the midst of his running himself near-dead.

While he struggled to balance himself on his sore feet

He realized he wore the soles of Hermes' sandals fleet

But even thus advantaged, was no more steps on his run;

The mountain-gods no longer blocked his way to the sun.


	6. He did not lie in wait for death

More than thirty-odd of the forty-odd years  
Of the life of Severus Snape had been spent  
As a weevil in the mortared cracks between  
The massive boulders of stone that made up the castle of Hogwarts.  
O! How he loathed it!

But what could he do but wait,  
Biting his tongue and biding his time and bearing the troubles  
Of men he had no reason to love.  
His heart was already long scarred,  
Scarred enough that the daily violations of his soul and psyche  
That he endured from both parties he served  
Took their toll only on his body.

A self-flagellating masochist,  
His homeostasis was a state of constant anguish.  
Nothing else would be proper in the light of his transgressions,  
Which were against goodness, against beauty, against humanity,  
And against the God of his saint-swearing father, Tobias.

A slave who worked to earn the regard of dead women's shadows,  
Of the holy trio of disapproving martyrs who guarded his heart,  
Eileen Prince, Lily Evans, and Mary, Mother of God,  
(All of whom probably never even liked him at all,  
Much less loved him, much less forgave him);  
This was one of many careers known intimately to Severus.

He was faced with acknowledging eternity's edge too young;  
There was only so much that his potions and dark arts could heal.  
So he filled the wells of his curious subconscious with earth,  
Swearing never to plumb them again.  
Instead he scraped the sand in marble rock gardens built atop these wells' covers,  
Gardens of Pandemonium so excellently crafted that his masters rarely even knew  
That there had been sights and smells of Eden there before.

And time went on.  
The Christ-like Divine Child Potter danced onto the landscape  
Leaving the shakily-rooted oak of Severus' cultivation  
Disrupted and withered, as bare as the cross on his father's mantel.  
Severus could not find himself any solace;  
What was once scarce was now unfindable.  
He could no longer bear the rank smell or greasy taste  
Of his dungeon dwelling-place,  
Which stank with the blood of unacknowledged martyrdom.

For every moment of his waking  
Was wrought with interminable loathing-  
For his life, for his essence, for his surely-damned soul.  
And aggravated by the sight of Lily's eyes trapped by Potter's goggles,  
Severus could not deny his most mortal, gravest error,  
Which was otherwise kept from his nightly homage to the Oneiroi  
Only by Occulmency; Morpheus had no chance to draw  
Images of the fairy-goddess Lily in Severus' dreams.

When the apparent time came for him to arise and go  
To the place where his heart would be weighed,  
Severus breathed with the fire of blood at his lips and venom in his veins  
Until the Potter-child left him for dead, bearing sacred but unwanted memories.  
Ash-wing fly, wormwood and thyme had been long prepared  
In an alchemical mass for the unholy praise of human ingenuity  
For this day, and they were antibodies repressing the foreign toxin  
And aiding the inoculated liver of a self-acknowledged devil.

He did not want to pass to the realm of the Stygian flow  
And there drink up the hemlock potion of justice that his life's calamities had brewed.  
He'd not had a chance to saturate himself in softer colors than green,  
And there was also the desire to flaunt his resilience to two masters-  
Three, counting the Lord God-who wanted him dead.  
A survivor he'd always been, and he planned to not change.  
The talented pawn had reached the end of the board,  
And, in his view, had earned a chance to checkmate as a queen.

**Author's Note:**

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